by Betsy Shaw posted in Parenting

11 years old, according to what I've witnessed with my kids--not according to memory because, darn it, I can't remember--is the king of ages.
I remember when Esther, my oldest, was 11. Isla and Esther are two very different children. But the essence of their elevenness is the same. The world is their oyster.

Isla is happy 99 percent of the time. She likes how it feels to be growing up. She notices the way we are meeting each other, intellectually, on a more even plane lately, that we are starting to treat her as more of an adult and less of a child. She puts herself to bed, most nights, though doesn't hesitate to tell me when she needs to be "tucked in."
She decides when it's time to shower, and has developed such a grownup ritual around it, including the hair wrapped up in a towel piled on top of her head, like a turban. Like Cher. She makes jokes we can laugh at without faking.  She talks exuberantly at the dinner table. All the while noticing her reflection in the bay window across from where she sits. I see her seeing herself in a new light. Liking what she sees. Can anyone remember that" Looking in the mirror and truly loving, unconditionally, what you see"
This morning she came out of her room in a floral top and floral blousy shorts, not matching, struck a pose and said, "I call this, flowertopia!"
Sometimes it seems as if she's a 100-year-old woman in a child's body. She talks about things I'd neve...